It is respectfully proposed that within technical society, management of data, including generating, storing and accessing the same has become one of the foremost priorities. Technical corollaries to Moore's Law mandate constantly improved ways of improving efficiency of data storage devices. “Kryder's Law” per Scientific American (8/2005) suggests that the density of hard drives increases by a factor of 1,000 every 10.5 years (doubling every thirteen years). At a micro-level a need exists at the present time for a simple low-cost method of controlling the position of the read/write heads in information storage systems at the lowest available energy consuming state. This objective remains prominent even as other sustainably initiatives look to be soon accomplished.
A number of different disc drive systems have been available in the market which incorporate, for example, two prime movement sources, of which one supplies continuous rotational motion to the storage disc, and the other supplies. Alternating rotational or linear motion and control and positioning of the read/write head, which are required for selection of storage locations on the disc. Other attempts to gain efficiency have either failed to gain traction in the marketplace or been subject to different challenges.
In today's IT markets, with the proliferation of the use of general and special purpose, there is an ever increasing demand for higher capacity memory devices. The main memory storage device of computers is the hard disk drive (HDD) comprised of a rigid disk, or more typically, a stack of closely spaced rigid disks, with actuator arms carrying tiny magnetic transducer heads being adapted to move radially within such stack of disks in comb-like fashion to record and read magnetically encoded data along circumferential tracks on both faces of all of such superimposed disks, or data platters.
As mentioned, operational constraints currently include the issue that subject computers are built with certain predefined spaces for accommodating the aforedescribed hard disk drive devices, the overall dimensions of such devices, or modules, have been fixed into a small group of discrete package sizes or form factors. Thus increases in the memory capacity of a disk drive module of a given industry standard package size have been made either by increasing the density of the data written on a given area of a disk or by an improved mechanical design, e.g., by providing a greater number of disks in a given package size. That is, prior to the advent of the instant teachings, wherein power may be further optimized within the context of extant form factors.
In addition to maximizing the number of disks in a given package size, various attempts have been made to improve the magnetic head positioning mechanisms, i.e., the actuator arms and the drive arrangements thereof, in order to improve access time, positioning precision, and reading reliability. In prior art mechanisms, several different types of magnetic head positioner mechanisms, or actuator arms, have been developed. Linear positioners generally include a carriage carrying actuator arms which are moved radially with respect to the axis of rotation of the disks in order to position the magnetic heads along various of the circumferentially arranged tracks. Pivotally mounted actuator arms, or rotational positioners, pivot about an axis parallel to the axis of the disk stack so that the magnetic heads carrier at the distal ends thereof are swung in arcuate paths across the magnetically encoded tracks of the disks.
Such pivotally mounted actuator arm assemblies generally include counterbalancing drive arms provided with a voice-coil motor or servo-motor for providing the rotational movement thereto. There has been a continuing search for new and different ways to design such rotational drive mechanisms in order to improve data access time and reading reliability, and various arrangements have been proposed in order to fit within the predescribed form factors and yet provide as efficient and reliable a mechanism as possible. To date, the ongoing search for optimized HDD mechanisms has yet to be completely addressed. Namely, the next paradigm, it is respectfully proposed, has yet to be invented, discovered or commercially implemented, other than by incremental improvements. The present invention is offered for consideration to address these issues and offer solutions to manage the same.
In a conventional actuator arm assembly of the typical prior art hard disk drive devices the actuator arms and the magnetic heads supported thereby are positioned one above the other in a superimposed arrangement so that all of the arms move jointly within the disk stack with the magnetic heads traversing identical super-imposed paths across the opposed faces of the disks. This requires that the spacing between adjacent disks be such as to accommodate a pair of magnet heads, the flexure mountings, and the required supporting arm dimensions.
In recent years, attempts have been made to decrease this required dimension between disks in a stack by offsetting the magnet heads and their flexure mountings between the opposed faces of adjacent disks so that the spacing between disks can be reduced to accommodate just slightly greater than that required for the support arm and a single flexure mounting and its supported magnet head.
There exists an ongoing and longstanding need to lower rotational latency without increasing the speed of the HDD's subject disk(s) or data platters. Numerous approaches have been employed to attempt this, however, the instant teachings, it is respectfully proposed, offer an entirely new approach, constituting—it is respectfully submitted progress in science and the useful arts, and a proper subject matter for U.S. Letters Patent. Since being adopted as the dominant secondary storage device for general purpose computers in the 1960's, HDD's have been continuously improved driving a >$33 billion market this year. Three primary manufacturers, Seagate (Dublin, Ireland), Toshiba (Tokyo, Japan) and Western Digital (Orange County, Calif.) should be considered as sources for any specific part or component of the instant systems. Recording capacity, price per unit storage and product lifetime strongly suggest HDD technology remains an important space for plethoris desiderata. By reducing rotational latency, the present system continues to drive HDD technology past solid-state drives (SSDs) as the once and future secondary storage gold standard.